Get out your hankies: Rutgers expert says allergy season blooms early again this year

Tree pollen under an electron microscope. According to a scientist who takes daily counts of pollen in central New Jersey, spring pollination is coming earlier and earlier. Photo courtesy of Leonard Bielory, MD.

SPRINGFIELD — If you think your allergies have been coming on earlier and earlier each year, you’re probably right.

According to Dr. Leonard Bielory, an allergy specialist with Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital and the Rutgers Center of Environmental Prediction, tree pollen counts this week are at moderate levels, “finally where they are expected to be for this time of year.”

Levels in March were in the thousands, Bielory said, “the highest in the past 25 years for that month.”

According to Bielory, who measures and reports pollen counts for the New York/New Jersey area, the data suggest that the pollen season “has started very strong this year and practically one month earlier (than usual.)” Over the past three years, Bielory said, tree pollination has started a week earlier each year.

Moreover, he said, grasses appear to have begun pollinating as well, more than a month early. Grass pollen was first detected in late March, Bielory said, and are now where they typically are in May — “a novel finding for this time of year.”

Total pollen and mold count is 771 grains of pollen per cubic meter today, April 5, Bielory said, and is expected to approach 1,000 in the next few days. The same index on March 27 was 1,096, a number Bielory called “moderately high” at the time.

Tree pollen counts, measured at 67 gains per cubic meter today, are expected to double and triple over the weekend, he said.